“My jaw is on the ground. I can’t even believe these are me!!!!” » Ms. K

Hi there! I’m Lindley, pronounced LIN-lee. I’m a professional photographer who specializes in working with people of all ethnicities and genders, not just the ones whose bodies are likely to be seen in magazines and advertisements. I help women reclaim their gorgeous, their sexy, and their confident with stunning body-positive portrait and boudoir sessions.

As a plus-size woman, I get how frustrating it can be to always feel like you’re the ugly one, the clumsy one, the one who just needs to buckle down and change yourself so you can deserve to feel beautiful. Our culture sets a very narrow range of “acceptable” bodies and punishes those who fall outside it.

This narrow ideal affects us. A recent study found that “70% of teen girls agreed that magazines strongly influencedwhat they thought was the ideal body type.” Also, “Numerous correlational and experimental studies have linked exposure to the thin ideal in mass media to body dissatisfaction, internalization of the thin ideal, and disordered eating among women.”

I think every body on the planet is beautiful and worthy just as it exists today. That’s why I’m channeling my 15 years of photography experience into creating stunning portraits of non-mainstream bodies, particularly curvy and full-figured women. I work with people of all sizes, genders, orientations, ability levels, and ethnicities. I have a natural gift for finding the unique beauty in every person and making them feel comfortable, safe and empowered.

This kind of judgment-free approach is extraordinarily rare. In fact, I’m so committed to this approach that unlike most portrait photographers — who do heavy skin retouching and routinely make their clients look thinner by using tricks like the Photoshop ‘liquefy’ tool — the only retouching I do is light skin smoothing, very subtle blemish removal and a few tweaks to make clients’ eyes come alight in the final images.

I believe in representing women as they are today in my photography, while conforming just enough with current “beauty” standards that women using those photos in their personal and professional lives aren’t penalized by existing outside those standards. That means that I might do slightly heavier skin smoothing on a professional headshot than on a personal portrait, but I never remove permanent features like wrinkles or rolls.

I believe that your worthiness is in no way affected by your clothing size.

I believe your body is intrinsically beautiful.

I believe that fat people don’t need extreme posing or heavy retouching to look fantastic in photographs.

I believe that your face is perfect and precious, with or without makeup.

I believe that fat rolls aren’t ugly.

I believe that “ugly” people are exactly as valuable as “pretty” people.

I believe that everyone should be able to take and publish selfies without shame, fear, or ridicule.

I believe that photography is a powerful form of self-expression and representation for people who are underrepresented in the media and in photography, especially people who are larger, live with disabilities, and/or are part of the LGBTQIAP+ community.

Body Positive Photography Pledge

As a body positive photographer, I:

» View human bodies — all of them — with honesty, joy and compassion

» Seek out a wide range of people who aren’t trained models for my portfolio images

» Don’t talk about “problem areas” or “flaws”

» Don’t strive to make bodies look smaller or larger than they actually are

» Don’t digitally remove permanent aspects of people’s bodies like fat rolls or wrinkles Honor the body that each person has in this moment, in all its beauty and uniqueness

» Strive to capture a wide range of body types, shapes, sizes, colors and orientations in my portfolio work, both to increase the representation of people in underrepresented bodies and to make clients in any conceivable body feel safe working with me

» Use poses that are reasonably comfortable for each person’s body shape and size, rather than slavishly imitating only poses that very thin people use

» Feature a full range of client and portfolio images on my website and in my social media, not just “aspirational” bodies